The Quiet Rise And Rise Of Amos Kimunya That Kenyans Still Ignore

“Blind-side winger” gunning for the presidency?

I love the game of soccer, but I think I love rugby more.

Amos Muhinga Kimunya the current Finance Minister and a Kibaki insider, was once a student at the Nairobi University and he no doubt used to watch the wildly popular varsity rugby team, Mean Machine in action. One of the most devastating tactics in the game of rugby (which Mean Machine has occasionally employed for years) is the use of a blind side winger. The game generally flows in the opposite direction to where the blind side winger is positioned (well-hidden) somewhere behind the crowded scrum. It is only at the very last split second when the direction is switched and usually a long pass is hurled in the opposite direction and by the time the opposition team get to see the winger coming in at a terribly high speed on the blind side, it is too late for them to do much and he easily scores.

Finance minister Amos Kimunya reminds me of some of the great blind side wingers I had the pleasure of both watching in action and playing with. On the political front this guy nobody had heard of as late as 2002 is coming in on the blind side at a terribly high speed and the crazy thing is that nobody has seen him yet.

This is more than a little surprising because at the height of the political crisis over the disputed presidential elections, early this year, Amos Kimunya's name popped up a little too frequently in intelligence reports circulating amongst Western powers who were critically weighing their dwindling options as the country threatened to degenerate into another Somalia. At the time I must admit that I was fairly puzzled and wondered why there was no mention of stronger and more prominent PNU faces that would be possible successors to Kibaki like George Saitoti or Uhuru Kenyatta. I have since wizened up.

But let us tell this tale chronologically for better clarity.

When the still unresolved Anglo-Leasing scum rocked the Kibaki government in 2006 and forced the then unprecedented move where Finance Minister Daudi Mwiraria resigned, very few people would have guessed that he would be replaced by the little known Lands and Settlement Minister, Amos Kimunya. It is no secret that Mwiraria and the president have always been very close and there are those who still say that the entire “brains” behind Mwiraria’s tenure at the Treasury was the president himself. Hardly surprising when you consider that the President is a world renowned economist and a man whom historians consider to have been the most successful Kenyan finance minister, both under founding father President Jomo Kenyatta and then briefly in President Moi’s government. Indeed it is now emerging that Kibaki had some very firm text book ideas in mind about how he was going to handle the economy as he took over as president and so what he required most in the finance portfolio was a person who could take instructions more than anything else.

This explains why Kimunya ended up in pole position to take over the Finance docket. Between 2002 and 2006 the shrewd Kimunya had wormed his way...

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Tomorrow in Kumekucha: Update on Trent Keegan (foreign Photo journalist killed in Nairobi) murder as investigations take a surprising new twist. Don’t miss it.